The Tale of Dævara and Bradwold, continued

from the forthcoming novel, The Fate of Stars.

Brad had never been gone more than three months before.

Something certain told Dævara he wasn’t coming back.

That meant he was dead or captive. There could be no other reason.

She tried finding him with the Syrat, but her emotions where he was concerned were so intense and conflicted, all attempts came to naught

After weeks of agonizing, Dævara made her choice.

She packed up, said goodbye to her friends, and went looking for her lover.

Bradwold Vanishes

Dævara stayed at the inn in Hamlet another three years. Brad came and went every month or so, ranging farther and farther afield for his treasure. He acquired companions to aid in his quests and came less frequently.

Then he stopped coming.

Never had they exchanged promises or words of love, though the elf felt love deeply and was sure he did, too.

She had continued to whore during his absences and had made no secret of it.

Bradwold hadn’t expressed so much as a word of disapproval or hurt—not even a frown!

Brad had had his dalliances on his quests, had even taken up with a female thief in his band for almost a year.

But he always came back to the inn, to his Dævara even so.

Dæv told herself that didn’t matter that he wasn’t sexually faithful. Something so restrictive was alien to their love.

Besides, she had his heart. It couldn’t be otherwise for she’d altered his Fate with the Syrat.

She had to believe that. Dævara had spent her life working with the cards; she knew when they worked and when they didn’t. She had felt the shift.

Bradwold had to love her. No matter what choices he made; no matter what hole he shoved his cock into, he’d always love her and only her.

Why didn’t she believe that? Uncertainty hadn’t been a familiar feeling for the elf in a long time. It’s return frightened her.

Eight months since he’d been to the inn; eight months since she’d felt his weight on her, his dick in her or his tongue; eight months since she’d tasted his spend or felt it surge into her or splatter onto her skin.

No other lover made her pine like this. She missed him in her bed just for the sheer animal comfort it brought when she slept.

Brad had never been gone more than three months before.

Something certain told her he wasn’t coming back.

That meant he was dead or captive. There could be no other reason.

No.

He couldn’t be dead; she’d know it.

She tried finding him with the Syrat, but her emotions where he was concerned were so intense and conflicted, all attempts came to naught.

After weeks of agonizing, Dævara made her choice.

She packed up, said goodbye to her friends, and went looking for her lover.

Dæv told herself she wasn’t being a fool. The cards had never misled her, not even as a human child.

Questing for the Pretty Man

At first, she looked frantically, scouring every dungeon, temple, haunted castle, lost city, and brothel he’d ever mentioned.

A year later Dævara was quite a bit richer, tougher, and the most feared and admired adventurer that world had ever known. Partly that was elven luck, charm, and Magick.

Mostly, though it was a homicidal crankiness brought on by a year of self-imposed celibacy.

Dævara couldn’t help it. Love had her that bad.

She felt guilty looking at anyone else in a sexual way while her love was out there somewhere, imprisoned perhaps tortured maybe even…she could never finish the thought.

Many years later, she would look back on this time as proof that love was a punishment for being stupid.

⁂

One evening over a year after leaving Hamlet, at the tail end of the northern winter, Dæv sat near a bullseye window looking out at what she dearly hoped was the last storm of the season.

Fat, white flakes of snow flew past almost horizontally, covering muddy slush and iced-over ruts on the wide dirt street before her.

Wagons, motor vehicles, and even the occasional hover transport inched both ways along it. People mummified in furs treaded the walkway in front of her quickly, arms tucked in, chins touching chests, aching to get out of the cold and into the warm and dry.

She turned back to the room for a moment as the jukebox started yet another angsty ‘my love has gone to shit’ song sung in another nasal, whiny voice.

Of the dozen or so people in the tavern, only the barmaid seemed more than half alive. But then, her customers were quiet, drinking steadily, and tipping large.

Dæv took another sip of bourbon, a type of liquor she drank only in desperation.

Brad wasn’t on this world.

That meant he’d gone elsewhere.

In the first heady months of their courtship, Dævara had tried to get Brad to come away with her to the other worlds of the Thirty Aions. He’d never said no but had always managed to put off a definite yes.

She got the impression that he was not afraid, so much as unsure.

Brad had lived on one world his whole life.

Several month ago, she’d visited the village he’d been born in, so she believed him when he said he didn’t even know of the existence of other worlds until he’d left for good when he was sixteen.

Bradwold might have changed his mind and left for adventure on other worlds either on his own or in the company of others.

Maybe.

Why wouldn’t he have at least told her he was going? Did he think she no longer cared? Was leaving even his idea? Who was he with?

Finding him among all the worlds of thirty multiversal Aions seemed a hopeless task.

Dæv knew she was going to do it, anyway.

She finished the bourbon, grimaced, and grabbed her red metal staff. Flicking a silver coin at the Barmaid, who grabbed and pocketed without even looking up. Dæv pushed open the oak door of the inn and exited into the storm.

The only government building in the province was four blocks up. It was almost half an hour’s walk in this miserable weather.

As she stepped into the Portal that led off world, Dævara looked exactly as she had leaving Ælfen over a century before, bar the snow in her hair.

Looking Offworld

Her first assumption was that her love would have stayed on worlds resembling his own. That meant most of the ones in the same spiral arm of his home galaxy.

She scouted them first.

Once started, Dævara realized her quest wouldn’t take as long as she’d thought.

The elf woman had worked Brad’s home world the hard way, slogging through place after place herself. She’d been frantic, but that was no excuse for sloppiness.

Dæv set up a game plan. She’d pop onto a likely world and find the local equivalent of the Mages Guild.

For a nominal fee, she had student wizards search for news of Brad using their best Magick. Most of what they used were things they had no business using yet, but half the fun of being a student was doing things forbidden by one’s masters.

Without waiting for an answer, she’d go to the next one and do the same. In a day, she could visit a dozen worlds. Next day, she’d hit more.

When she thought the first set of worlds had had long enough to find anything there was to find, she’d revisit and get her reports.

And so on for the next set. And so on.

If she found him, or news of him, she’d follow that lead and forget the rest of the searches. If not, she’d carry on.

It worked as planned, mostly.

In a month, Dævara had eliminated a third of the possible candidates.

But no sign of her love did she find.

Worryingly, her self-imposed celibacy was having some nasty long-term effects. Maybe it was being a Leannán elf that made it so detrimental, but she found she had trouble concentrating. Her appetite also began to suffer, and she was sure she was aging more quickly than she should.

Worst of all, her facility with the Syrat was fading. Dæv had been relying heavily on it to guide her choice of worlds as well as the truth and thoroughness of the searches carried out on her behalf.

Without its guidance, she’d quickly be lost. Valuable clues could escape her. She might miss the world he was on altogether.

Diddling herself daily was not cutting it anymore. She needed more.

In a moment of weakness that would haunt her, she paid fourteen gawky, pimply, supposed-to-be celibate, male student wizards for their diligent search efforts with a night of unrestrained sex.

What they lacked in experience, which was everything, they made up for in enthusiasm. A seventeen-year-old man-child could manage up to a dozen orgasms in a three-hour period, she learned.

By the standards of an excellently trained whore, it was a shameful performance. In her state, Dævara found it heavenly. She lost count of her own orgasms.

Leaving the men—she had to call them that now—with memories they’d cherish for the rest of their lives, she went on her way to the next world feeling, and looking, substantially younger.

The Syrat spoke to her again as it hadn’t since Brad went away.

It must have been the sex. The group on the next world had found something.

The Trail Heats Up

It seemed that Brad had been on this planet for almost a year, doing a bit of adventuring alone.

The wizards had managed to track the inn he frequented while here. It seemed Bradwold had looked for companions but couldn’t find any takers. Feeling distrusted, and apparently a bit lonely, he’d gone off world again.

No info on the date of his arrival or whether he showed up in company did they have.

They did have a lead on his destination. He talked about going to the more hi-tech, industrial worlds of another Aion.

Dæv had to smile. So far, he seemed to be following the back trail she’d left when she had come this way.

The love-stricken elf got lucky again.

She was able to find out not only which Portal Brad had taken, but what system it had taken him to. Her lover was on one of several worlds in a constellation she’d spent over two years in decades ago.

One of the clerks at the government building the Portal was located at remembered him, as he did cut a dashing profile, and remembered that the colour of the vortex had been aubergine.

A quick check and she knew the image and mnemonic that would open it for the right destination. Feeling better than she had in a long time, Dævara went through, swallowed in dark violet light.

⁂

The chances of catching Brad up were exponentially greater on hi-tech worlds. Most had planet-wide defense grids, full time audio-visual surveillance and kept records of all transport on an off world by whatever means used.

She landed on Tach, a world she’d ever visited.

It was high grav, meaning she felt tired all the time and half again her weight.

It was also crowded. She never did find out its population, but the entirety of its sole continent was one large urban zone.

‘Urban’ on this world meant solid blocks of steel and plastic a mile high and half a mile wide and long, separated by multi-level traffic lanes. Most of the population never saw the large pale green sun in their entire lives.

Dæv couldn’t imagine Brad remaining long on this world.

Frustratingly, it took over a local week to confirm that. She’d forgotten how fond most tech savvy worlds were of bureaucracy; and how much it slowed things up.

She made the best of the delay while waiting for permission to gather info from various agencies.

They sold a decent whiskey here. The food, though synthetic, was quite tasty, and the short muscular natives sure knew how to make a girl howl.

She left with Brad’s next destination and quite a bit more coin than she’d arrived with.

That destination was Midgard. It was the one industrial world she might have settled on during her travels away from home.

She stepped out of another Portal on the lowest level of a green crystal city she knew well.

It was one of several floating under the stratospheric ice and above the red-liquid iron of a sea far below.

A sudden urge to stop moving hit her as she settled in with a native family she had known well during her time here.

As pale as the crystal their city was made from, the people were her height and possessed of an almost transparent flesh.

She slept that night naked on a futon, bathed in dim green light.

Dævara’s Sin

The next day brought her Brad.

He’d been staying with a mining collective, helping to extract liquid iron from the sea of it on the surface.

While she slept, her friends had found her lover and told him she was in the city. He woke her with a kiss. He was naked, as all the locals were.

Dævara didn’t give him a chance to explain himself. She didn’t even give him a chance to speak as she sated a towering lust.

Four hours later, he was passed out and she was awake and chipper. She sat and again watched his sleep, not feeling the least bit creepy for doing so.

His face seemed both longer and more narrow. It was a scholar’s face now, not a warrior’s and certainly not a miner’s.

His hair was still long, but past his shoulders now, and had streaks of silver in it, but she had to part it just the right way to notice.

The stubble on his chin was more white than black, too. He also had a cute little belly he hadn’t had before. Dæv smiled at the way he had kept sucking in his gut when he’d arrived.

There were new scars here and there. Nothing serious or deforming, just the continued record of a man that had, until recently, made a living cutting up nasty creatures deep underground for treasure.

Just for now, she was inclined to forgive him anything.

⁂

Brad didn’t have an interesting, inventive story. He had a couple of brutal truths.

The good news, from Dævara’s perspective, was that he was indeed, hopelessly in love with her.

The bad news was that he knew of the spell she’d cast on him during their first meeting and disapproved.

The way he told it, Bradwold had felt something the moment she had used the Syrat to change his Fate but put it down to her native effect on him.

He realized over the next few days that something more was going on, but thought it was just love.

So, it had gone on.

He felt that something wasn’t right, but couldn’t figure out what to do about it, except resist the tug of her.

The fighter had done it unconsciously at first, but then deliberately.

He claimed to have figured out on his own that he’d been put under a spell. Dæv suspected otherwise but felt badly enough not make an issue of it.

When Bradwold did know for sure, he’d been angry. It was worse than mere coercion; it was a kind of rape. That’s why he ran.

Dævara stopped him there, placing a finger over his lips as she had long ago. She wept then, feeling wretched, feeling evil. The full revelation of the magnitude of her misdeed hit her. Once it started, she couldn’t stop it. She curled up and howled. How could she have done this to him? To anyone?

Brad let her cry. He didn’t pull away, but neither did he try to comfort. Why would he? He was wronged and so very hurt by what she had done.

Eventually, her adopted family came in and surrounded her, caressing her, cooing their distress, and trying to comfort.

Brad was gently moved away.

In time, the fit passed. At her request, the family left her alone with Bradwold.

She stood before him, forcing herself to look him in the eye. He was trying to be impassive, but she saw he was failing. He loved her after all, no matter that it was tainted.

“I—” she coughed. Her voice was hoarse from her fit—“I want ta say, I’m sorry, I do. I know it won’t be enough. No words o’ mine can make it better.”

Brad replied, “I’ve spent most of the last two years thinking about what I’d say when we met again. I was so angry for so long. I want to forgive, Dæv. I can’t, though. At least, not yet.”

Dævara had done her weeping. She wouldn’t let herself start again. “I understand. I’m glad yer still speakin’ ta me, I am.” She sighed heavily. “I’d best go, I think.” And felt better for the decision made.

“Where will you go? Back home?”

Dævara shook her head. “No. Not yours, nor mine, I think. Have ya heard of a city called Glyph?” Though she hadn’t heard from the Templar, her father, it would be there that he went after securing the Syrat.

He nodded. “Oh, yes. Some of the miners talk of it. Some sort of free city, they say. I know one fellow goes there every year.”

“I’ll be headin’ there. Always work fer a good Teller there.”

“And a good whore?”

The words were meant innocently enough but given the tension between them, they stung anyway. “Aye, there’s always tha,’ there is.” She turned away to begin making her preparations to leave.

“Maybe—”

“Don’t!” Dæv spun to face Brad and stopped him with a raised hand. “Whatever happens’ll happen. Don’t be makin’ ‘probablys’ or ‘maybes’ ta me ifn ya can’t forgive, just don’t!”

“Okay.” He held her gaze for one more moment then turned and walked away.

Just like that, Dævara’s world had shattered, the pieces falling at her feet.

Redemption

The elf made her way to Glyph in less than a day.

The Garda seemed to like her well enough; they raised no fuss at her arrival. It took her weeks to get settled properly.

Fortune tellers were plentiful, but the Syrat was distrusted here for reasons other than the obvious, reasons she wouldn’t learn about for years.

She ended up as a whore at a place called the Blue Griffin. The owner, Gregarrt, was both big and big hearted. He hadn’t had an elf whore in his establishment in some time. There was no shortage of customers out for a little novelty.

She managed to sneak in a bit of Telling, eventually.

Greg didn’t approve but put up little fuss. Dæv brought a lot of money in and was less trouble than most of his staff.

As the years passed, she let her heart heal over as much as it could and plied her trades with her usual sexy charm.

She even made new friends and began to laugh and enjoy life again. The Nonspace City had such blessings to bestow on all her wayward children.

Still, she was not prepared for it.

⁂

Bradwold, the Pretty Man, walked up to her one day and spun her around gently. She heard the large scarred man who’d been chatting her up object loudly.

A shout from a stone troll interrupted the hiss of a dagger being drawn from its sheath. The troll, one of the bouncers of the Blue Griffin, strode past her holding the unfortunate fellow off the ground by one arm.

All of this was background ephemera to Dæv.

Bradwold hadn’t aged a day since that painful parting on Midgard. He had the same smile, the same hair, the same eyes.

His eyes! That look was back in his eyes. The look he’d first given her.

Before he’d ever spoken.

Before he’d first sat.

Before she’d shamed her mother and her adopted kin by twisting his Fate.

The look that said, clear as words, that he’d loved her from the moment they’d met.

And all he had done was smile.

In truth, that was all he had had to do.

She moved into his arms and kissed him through her tears.

—Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, June 2020

Copyright © 2020, Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved.